92 should be a none vanos engine. Do you have any service records ? What's the mileage ? Does it have A/C ? What I see that goes wrong is radiator,WP, heather valve, aux pump below the HV, coolant hoses of course, aux fan seizes up. Here in Florida the mother board from the instrument cluster goes out quite often . Suspension wise the thrust arm bushings go bad, rear track links noisy, I think of some more stuff later I am sure. Usually they're pretty solid cars if maintained right. HTH Thomas
That's the 4 wheel drive one, yeah ? If so, lugging around another 100kg + of four wheel drive gear is not needed IMHO. Thrust arm bushes don't last,heating system can be a pain, steering sloop, and the age means the body work and exhaust system can be rusting away. I sold the 540 just today, Dave. Great cars....
OMG! It's gone? Oh man... :98: You sure got your money out of that one I think. I've been getting familiar with mine again now that I've stopped driving the 320is; almost forgot how good the shagon wagon was. Dave, for the money I'd find a non-iX. There are so many out there you can be choosey. Jake
Went for 1K to a guy on a 5 series forum. It was great fun and I got 13 days use at the 'Ring - which was pretty good fun. 4th gear syncro was giving up though and I never did get get around to sorting the heating system to avoid fogging up in the winter months. Also needed various other bits doing and I hated paying $9 for a gallon of gas - cos it never lasted long ! I have to admit to being a bit sad when he drove off in it, It was looking the best it ever had One other thing to check is the fuel pipes on the back around the tank. I got an MOT advise for this and I think I remember Jake telling me they are prone to this is the wet climate of the UK. E39's are soo cheap now ,I think I'd look for a good one of those.
i'm just after a cheapo runabout as a stop gap. Needs to be an estate as well, i saw a 525ix touring you see and hadn't really noticed they ever existed before.
This is what you want,Dave. Ultra rare in 540 6 speed wagon in RHD. Only 62 examples were built. http://www.pistonheads.com/sales/277792.htm
Seems like a lot of car for the money Brian. What about that engine mileage ? Reasonably bullet proof piece of kit the 540 ?
100K is nothing on that engine ,they really can take a lot of abuse with ease. They are fantastic cars the 540's....if you can keep up with the fuel bills
Yeah...I get that One day they are going to tell us all that we have to rock on down to some local shop (read : new and waiting to rip us off) and get our fuel system changed over to something like solar panels or God knows what ). We had a little taste of that here in NZ back in the 1980's. A lot of folk had their cars coverted to LPG or CNG (liquid petroleum gas/ compressed natural gas). My brother and I had the CNG tanks installed. Our work vehicles had a switch (as did everyone else's) whereby you could be running on gas and then switch to petrol inside the car with a flick of a switch ...quite cool really. CNG was a bit gutless...well, put it this way, you DEFINATELY would not want to run that shit in your E30M3 but other than that...for a work vehicle it was a damn good option ...and cheap by comparison.
One for Jake when he gets home .... http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=290178202986
Thomas, I know that you only mean in jest, but i really think its sociably unacceptable to have a 5.0l V12 to drive to the shops in! In the last 150 years the Worlds economic growth has been mainly based on fossil fuels (oil-coal) this has resulted in the emission of 500 gigatonnes of Co2 (most of it in the past 40 years) Which means that we are likely to see a temperature rise of 2C over the next century and the results 'could' be the reduction of land habitable by humans either by flooding or desertification as well as other catastrophic events in result of global warming. We need to do our parts and driving in a car which is releasing 300g + per km of Co2 is hardly the right message to give out! Surprisingly i had a fight with a guy outside a Tesco express because he sat there with his engine running while his Wife and son were shopping! Im not saying stop using cars but just try and do you part, Why not have Jake drive to work in a 1l Polo? Or share a ride with other people in his community that also work at the base? (only using jake as an example because hes been mentioned in the thread already) Sorry about this but these sort of things really wind me up!
Ok Andrew...well, I agree with you on all but one point. Do not bring Jake into the blurb because you and I both know that this is just winding things up. In fact ...you really are trying to cause problems here and after all the trouble that I have gone to in doing my upmost to help you...you are not really shaping up here. I'll leave that ball firmly in your court Andrew
Sorry but falling for the biggest falicy being perpetrated in todays world isn't an answer. To say human beings and their cars, planes, factories, industry produces enough co2 to alter the climate as a 'fact' that has been created by the powers that be. Human created co2 amounts to <2% of all co2 production. Our oceans account for the greatest production of co2, due to heat cycling over 30 years ago which causes the sea to release co2. Did anybody realise co2 levels have actually been falling since the late 70's...
increasing engine output by fitting bigger cams and turbos increase the Co2 as well......... there is no such thing as free lunch.
This whole 'carbon footprint' things really gets me going it's something i have had as a pet project for almost 10 years, did you know the whole Al Gore film etc used a research document that showed co2 levels are falling - he failed to mention that! The largest growing 'industry' in the world is the 'green industry' think about that...
